Nanotech inovations

One of Michigan Tech’s fast-growing, more promising Enterprises right now is Nanotech Innovations. They are small, but they are working on interesting research that is pertinent in many different fields.

The Nanotech Enterprise works toward two main goals: education and marketing. They regularly hold outreach programs to high school students and teachers, in which they may give presentations or lab tours. Also, in the near future, interested high school students may be able to experiment with a scanning tunneling microscope that the Enterprise is currently working on. They are also the only Enterprise currently marketing to the general public. More specifically, they sell some of the graphite crystals they work with to companies such as Naturally Graphite, which in turn use them for education, research and industry.

Nanotech Innovations’ own work primarily involves imaging graphite crystals, on the nanometer scale, using an atomic force microscope and a scanning tunneling microscope. The atomic force microscope runs a needled cantilever over the surface of a graphite sample; it detects atom bonds and the spaces between them from the amount of force on the needle. The tunneling microscope scans a conducting needle across the sample – not making contact, but held close enough for tunneling to occur. Basically, the tunneling phenomenon allows particles to disappear from one side of a barrier and reappear on the other. In this case, some electrons from the graphite sample can “jump” to the needle by tunneling, and the current they create shows where the most electrons are located within the sample. The picture here is an example of the type of image such a microscope would produce. The latticed structure of the graphite can be clearly seen from the white gaps, which are where the microscope detected the greatest presence of electrons.

The Nanotech Enterprise conducts research in a field that’s rapidly growing in science and society today. They are seeking new students from all majors; they already have some from several different fields of science and engineering. Nanotech Innovations will have an Engineering Exploration program for the first-year Fundamentals of Engineering course, and they are holding an informational Nanotech Night this Wednesday, from 6 to 8 p.m. in Fisher 139. Anyone looking for more information can also contact the group’s president Bryan Garfoot (begarfoo@mtu.edu) or vice president Greg Teeters (gdteeter@mtu.edu).